Dr. Tibor Navracsics:

I thank members for their questions. I will deal with similar questions in thematic groups.

I will address first the role of skills in education, apprenticeship programmes and the mobility of apprentices because clearly that is one of the lines we would like to follow in the future. It is obvious from the statistical data that we have to do more to make the education systems more skills oriented and transform them from being the traditionally one-sided knowledge oriented system into a more practical and skills oriented system, while availing of all of the opportunities and other forms of education to reach that goal. That is why we encourage member states to enrich their forms of education in lifelong learning and provide for greater investment in informal and non-formal education and use all of these opportunities to promote social inclusion. In our experience education is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, policy tools for social inclusion. That is why we have chosen the accessibility of education systems as a main topic for this year's Education and Training Monitor. There is a direct correlation between life opportunities and access to education systems. That means, from the point of view of the cohesion of future societies, accessibility of education systems can be an important societal factor. That is why we support projects to make cross-border apprenticeship and apprenticeship mobility programmes more common.

The European Solidarity Corps, ESC, was launched a year ago. Volunteering is a well known aspect of the corps. We have 43,000 applicants for it, most of whom are interested in volunteering schemes which are a successor to the European voluntary service programme. However, at the same time, we are working on the apprenticeship and occupation-led elements of the ESC which will offer new opportunities for cross-border apprenticeship programmes. It is a work in progress, but I hope that in the near future we can launch the first apprenticeship programmes and projects under the framework of the ESC. However, there are existing opportunities for cross-border apprenticeship activities within the Erasmus programme. There is an opportunity to establish apprenticeship consortia among companies through public private partnerships comprising public authorities and private companies.

They, too, can have cross-border apprenticeship programmes. International companies have a huge advantage in this area in that they can organise cross-border apprenticeship programmes within the framework of a company. We would like to develop the apprenticeship programmes of Erasmus+ in the future. Thus far, we have run programmes with 600,000 apprentices, which is quite large number, but we are still in the initial phase of cross-border activities in apprenticeship programmes. I agree that if we want to harness the potential of competitiveness of European economies we must put more emphasis on cross-border apprenticeship programmes because they equip people with not only relevant technical skills but language skills, which is important from the point of view of the Single Market.

On Brexit, there is a lot of uncertainty about the post-Brexit environment but as far as I know the education, research and innovation family in the United Kingdom is committed to retaining these programmes. It depends on the official position of the UK delegation and the EU delegation in the negotiations. I will do everything to protect the interests of young people with Irish passports or citizenship either side of the Border who wish to be participate in Erasmus+ programmes. I cannot imagine any scenario which would exclude Irish citizens from Erasmus+ irrespective of where they live. This programme is linked to citizenship, not location. I would like to protect all the achievements of the Erasmus programmes but, again, this is dependent on the position taken by the delegations. I agree that we must emphasis the social profile of education. The dominant position is to look at education performance exclusively through data and statistics, including through the Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, and the Education and Training Monitor. We tried to soften the statistical side of measuring education and performance through the Education and Training Monitor and making accessibility a factor. The accessibility of our education system cannot be expressed by figures alone. However, there is another danger because statistical based data can indicate a very technocratic profile of education. If one travels too far from the soft side, the result can be a subjective evaluation of the educational systems, which is very difficult even at European level because, while we are above national front-lines, we all have our national affiliations. For example, I am Hungarian and I am more biased to central European countries. I am more sensitive to their problems and Ireland would be more sensitive to the Irish problem, Brexit and so on. We have to find a good compromise between these two points of the evaluation and we are working on that.

Again, there is a strong correlation between the quality and level of education and the level of competitiveness of the future societies. The higher the quality and level of education today the higher will be our level of competitiveness tomorrow. There is general consensus among Education Ministers on the Education Council that education is the most important issue in the world. It is good that we have that strong consensus and we are all friends but equally important is that we convince Finance Ministers and Prime Ministers that education is the most important issue. This is the most important thing we can do today for tomorrow. If we want to tackle future unemployment and the issues of future competitiveness, social cohesion, solidarity and so on we must invest more in education and strive to raise the level of tertiary education and early school-leaving. We have to do our best to strengthen the social profile of the education institutions because that is the best way to tackle future challenges of these societies. I believe Ireland is on the right path. I accept that there are difficulties and problems but I know from my comprehensive knowledge of education policy in Europe that there is no member state without problems in education. Education is probably the biggest issue in every EU member state but in the rankings of the education systems Ireland performs very well. It is important to bear that in mind. I appreciate Ireland's efforts and its results in this area.

On sport, we have to do more in the area of grassroots sports. It is for this reason I opened the sports chapters of Erasmus+ exclusively to grassroots sports. I believe grassroots sports has a social function. It is not only about leisure time activities and wellbeing, it is about community, friendship and human relations. I would like to support and fund grassroots sports activities further in the future because the health and the core of the wellbeing of contemporary societies are at local level. If our local communities are powerful and strong, based on solidarity, we will have no problems at regional or national levels, or at European level. I would like to increase funding to grassroots sports activities to help them in social inclusion and to help them build sport facilities and make them more accessible. We can do more in rural development policy and regional development policy to help local communities to build their sports facilities to serve the interests of the local communities.

On the European Year of Cultural Heritage, this is not a Brussels exercise. We will hold few flagship events in Brussels but those events will serve local communities.

For instance, we are going to have a conference of the European capitals of culture and a workshop of the owners of the European heritage label. The topic of those events will be the ways in which we can best serve the interests of local communities. The only sustainable European scenario is a bottom-up European scenario. There is no top-down scenario which will be successful. European institutions simply cannot force their image or their plans on local communities. Just the opposite; we must invent our Europe at local level. We have to build up the European community from below. We have to base our future European community on the diversity of the local communities, and the European Year of Culture and Heritage is just the first step in this journey and in this enterprise.